Doctor

The guest of honor and her two friends were beaming when Dr. Marc E. Agronin, a geriatric psychiatrist and the director of mental health, arrived with a hug for everyone long after what would be normal office hours.

Dr. Agronin calls them his graduates — a trio of success stories among 3,700 patients he is responsible for, in what, by all accounts, is the largest geriatric psychiatry practice in the nation, at the Miami Jewish Health Systems.

Dr. Agronin says his mission is to restore dignity and hope to people who were raised at a time when mental issues were often stigmatized.

Dr. Agronin and other geriatricians find that behavioral therapy (changing the way one thinks and solving current problems) works better than analysis (excavating the past).

Mr. Dorville, a widower estranged from his four surviving children, was stabilized with medication for depression and then agreed — reluctantly — to participate in a group.

That was the case with Francoise Dorville, a 78-year-old Haitian immigrant who uses a wheelchair and is on dialysis and oxygen.

Rather, on a routine day, his work is often done ad hoc as he wanders the corridors, dining rooms and garden here.

He said grief is part of the human condition, not a psychiatric problem.

Mr. Dorville, a widower estranged from his four surviving children, was stabilized with medication for depression and then agreed — reluctantly — to participate in a group.

Dr. Agronin talked to them about accumulated grief, how one death re-opens others, how they had held themselves together for their families’ sake.

“Approximating what I do is hardly economically feasible,” said Dr. Agronin, the author of “How We Age.”

Out of the blue, the usually buoyant Mrs. Weisburd lost her composure.

Particularly for late-life depression, Dr. Agronin points to data assembled by the psychiatry department at the University of California, San Francisco, supporting behavioral and group therapy, treatment rarely tried with patients from generations typically considered averse to discussing such issues.

MIAMI — The Merry Widows, as they call themselves, were blinged out, Florida-style, to celebrate Elayne Weisburd’s 79th birthday at a sprawling community for seniors.

There are only 17 board-certified geriatric psychiatrists in the state, and a mere six here in southeast Florida, where snowbirds from New York often come to perch.